There’s lots of speculation going around that Google Me will threaten Facebook. I have my doubts, because Google continues to be among the least social companies and that makes it hard to be a leader in a marketplace where you do not really participate.
The truth is that I am rooting for Google. In fact, I root for anyone who goes up against Facebook. Why? Because Facebook continues to break the agreements it makes with users when they sign on and because Facebook’s uppermost management demonstrates continuing disdain for user privacy in service to the direct marketers it considers to be its real customers.
When I write about Facebook, as I so often do, many people agree with me and other suggest I get a clue. Facebook has 500 million users, I am reminded. People don’t seem to care about these issues, I am told. Get a clue, I am advised.
It’s funny. In my lifetime, I have witnessed so many companies displaced from absolutely dominant market positions into something considerably less than that. IBM actually owned the brand “PC,” and conventional wisdom declared you just didn’t get fired for selecting IBM Computers. In the 90s, Microsoft took over, and resistance to it, everyone heard, was futile. Now they are struggling to remain important. In automobiles, General Motors was so strong that it’s CEO could declare that what’s good for GM is good for the country. Now we the country wants GM to succeed because we own a significant piece of it.
The thing about dominant positions is that sooner or later they recede. Perhaps they could be sustained indefinitely, accept for the fact that invariably the dominant players get smug, and that complacence turns muscle into girth. That smugness makes them think they can decide what their customers want, rather than their customers should decide what the companies should make.
That brings us back to Facebook, a company that made it to world-dominator in record time. It is young and strong and so very, very confident in itself and its future. It is still growing.
It has already forgotten the power of its users. And because its users do not pay, Facebook never seems to regard them as customers.
And in this fact, there is a huge market opportunity. It’s one that Google may focus onto, or one that a couple of kids in a garage or spare bedroom may glom onto.
To beat Facebook, just offer everything Facebook offers, just like Salesforce.com does with Chatter, which pretty much looks like Facebook, as do a great many enterprise community sites.
Just change one rule: make absolutely clear that your loyalty is to the customer, not the marketer. That you will honor any user agreements ever signed. You will always, ALWAYS put the user first.
You will not displace Facebook overnight. It will take a few years. You will have very humble beginnings, but the barriers to entry are quite low and the promises very high. And as sure as the day follows the night, you will overtake Facebook.
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I go back an forth with Facebook. My wife uses it, my family uses it, but I can’t keep my account active. I recently found out they keep an extensive history of your chats, posts and mesages that you can download. That along with other privacy concerns keeps me from using it anymore. I figure if someone cares about me they will call or email. :)
I’d sign up for that.
Facebook is too unpredictable for my tastes. Even though i have people constantly asking me to friend them on it.
Twitter is a good example of balancing users and advertisers interests. Their private accounts are private. And advertising is only now becoming more of a piece of twitters strategy (@earlybird, promoted tweets etc). However, it is not being done at the users expense. Its an explicitly opt – in thing.
In other words, Twitter has respected its users, working its business model around them.
In the end, everybody wins.
I don’t think Facebook is permanent, but I do believe that in order for any brand to displace them, they should be more than just a replacement application. They shouldn’t just be a copycat, but be unique and much user friendly.
Agreed on Google. It seems that Facebook was once upon a time the company that regraded its userbase as its customers. I’d be a bit gun-shy to pull the trigger on another social network only to have its success affect the user-centric intentions of the founders. I hope you’re right and we see someone actually walk the user-centered talk. – @lalunablanca
Yip. Was just saying today that Danna Boyd at MSFT is probably their most potent weapon against FB. No company is invincible but they can ride out a decade. MSFT can “beat fb” by teaming up with Firefox and put a VRM node into the middle of it. All your data gets saved to a VRM node. If you wish to search, push it through Bing as priority but push the data back to your VRM node for you to trade off. Simultaneously deflate google and take the social graph away from RB. Should I just take my medication now, or is there something in that? :)
There’s no such thing as too big to fail. Or too small to succeed. Biggest lesson for entrepreneurs: listen to your audience – from buyers to people discussing your brand. And if you think they aren’t talking, think again. Ask them.
I thought I’d be a die-hard FB fan forever, but I went almost a year without participating when they started to slide down this slope. Just didn’t feel like a community anymore.
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